aisnub.com/2009/05/26/the-power-of-wow/ ====== mynameishere Losing all her money because she thought she was using the power of wow when she wasn't? Okay. ------ petercooper I'd say this is the exception rather than the rule (to what was actually said, not the story). ------ andreyf tl;dr "I thought I was using the power of wow, but I was mistaken" ------ axod Umm. Told anyone in here they were using "the power of 'wow'"? ~~~ marshallp I thought it sounded familiar and saw in Google Reader and the news feed that there were some posts about it. ~~~ axod Ah ok. So you just searched for "Power of wow" and found this particular blog post? That's nice. If you didn't know what it was, you could have just done a quick Google search for "Power of" "wow" to see all the relevant posts. ~~~ marshallp Yes. I searched with quotes because it's a play on words that makes me laugh. It's hard for me to explain so let me say this. I was trying to think of a play on words that when you read it the first time you thought, "Huh, that's clever" without getting it and laughing. That's my criteria for finding posts funny, if I can come up with at least 3 on a topic to chuckle. It's that simple. If you'd ever been in a social/crowd event where your attention was on something else you might get my meaning. I guess I'm not going to find another opportunity to do this if no one sees it. It's very hard for me to explain. I can't even understand it myself. Like when I watch something on youtube and I look at something else on youtube because I didn't notice what was on the screen, so I looked at another video. This is like that except when you were staring at something and thought it was stupid, so I was looking at another video. Anyway, it was hard to explain so I'm over it. The joke was lost on you. Sorry :) ~~~ axod Ah, I see what you mean now. Thanks for the explanation :) I read HN like a _lot_ more than you probably do though ;) ------ geuis So this is hackernews where randomness and off the cuff comments rule but this link is interesting enough to make it through the filter. Let's consider this a moment and see where it goes... The author of this article made some money on the stock market but somehow somehow got swindled out of it. Since then she says she's been thinking about how the guy did this, and she has a theory, which i think is pretty unique. What she theorizes is that the guy used her own understanding and understanding of how the stock market worked against her. He essentially pushed her into believing that something is good and so she jumps on board. And of course the thing is a good idea. What's interesting is that a lot of investors/traders do this. They're willing to try things on for size but they're not willing to jump in at the deep end. They are willing to dip their toes into the water, but won't dive in until they see something obvious enough that they can take the plunge. Or they will see an obvious opportunity or trade and jump in. They make this decision after looking at the same thing with a cold, impassive and disinterested eye. But this is only when they're looking from far away. In real life they never see anyone's face, so they can't tell if the person jumping in is smiling. So they feel more comfortable ignoring the obvious. Of course as soon as they become aware that someone has jumped in they get somewhat concerned and look more closely at this other person. Because they're not exactly sure how good the other person looks. Their confidence was not so great that they were sure they knew everything, but it also wasn't so low that they felt the other person was obviously wrong, and that they should join them. So they go through a brief period of uncertainty. Even if the other person was obviously right they have to consider their own confidence. Is this the confidence to accept risk? To jump in? To take on a risky business? Or maybe is the confidence not that good and if the other person can make more money, they should follow along. This may be the first time they're willing to admit that someone may have seen something others missed. This is when the other person gets cocky and loses their edge, because they think everyone knows they are right. So they get cocky, and lose their edge. They become so cocky that it doesn't matter what everyone else thinks. Eventually they have so much confidence they throw their arms up in the air and yell "Look at me! Look at me! Look at me! Look at me!" My opinion is that she's got a pretty good point. What she did is overconfident. Maybe she didn't have that much information, but she felt it in her gut that she was going to make a lot of money. So she took on more risk than she should have. And she bet against her gut feeling, so she may have had a good reason to do that, but she was certainly banking on her own confidence getting her through this. Eventually she got it so wrong that she lost her confidence. So she was losing money, and her confidence got worse. She may have even started to believe what she was telling everyone was just wrong, and so she started calling herself crazy, and started losing confidence. She got left behind by everyone else, so she started watching others closely. She started watching the stock market in a weird way. She thought that some kind of inside information or genius would give her an advantage, but that's not really how the market works. It's like trying to learn a complicated telephone system by reading the instructions for one person using a certain phone, but not the instructions for another person. You'll have a difficult time doing it